January Round-up
Food 2030 (here and here), the government's 20-year food strategy has been revealed by Environment Secretary Hilary Benn. “The government…wants less food waste, more food bought in season to reduce environmental impact and to encourage people to buy sustainably-farmed food.” Measures include making land available for people to grow their own food and more healthy cooking courses. Sadly, he said that consumers rather than retailers should lead on wasting less food.
The Conservatives unveiled their own plans for a supermarket ombudsman at the same conference - to settle disputes between retailers and suppliers.
The National Farmers' Union said the government's plans were a "useful blueprint", but said the government needed to achieve "the right balance" between productivity and sustainability.
Tom Macmillan says on Guardian comment “The report tells us to eat and waste less, yet we're exhorted to consume more to beat the recession.” And “If we do waste less food, experience shows we may spend what we've saved on stuff that's at least as bad for the environment. Unless, that is, we face up to what environmental economists call this "rebound effect" and ask whether can eat sustainably in an economy that depends on consumption growth.”
Felicity Lawrence points that the 2030 strategy “commits the government to only limited direct intervention, saying it favours instead voluntary-led approaches… The burden …is to fall considerably on consumers who should waste less food and change their eating habits.”
Live Q&A with Nick Herbert Shadow Environment Secretary
As of 2007, Wal-Mart it says it succeeded in cutting the amount of waste it sent to landfills by 55%. Wal-Mart also wants to be 100% driven by renewable power and recently said that it was purchasing sufficient wind energy in Texas to account for 15% of its electricity in the US. Matt Kistler, Wal-Mart's senior vice-president for sustainability, says saving on waste is a no-brainer: "At first it was a little bit of a reaction to the negative pressures as a company we'd been receiving. But very early on, from day two, there was a tremendous appetite not only from an environmental point of view but from a business point of view to do what we're doing."
Elimination of Food Waste could lift 1bn out of hunger say the Food Ethics Council. “Food waste also costs UK consumers £10.2bn a year and when production, transportation and storage are factored in, it is responsible for 5% of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions.” More from Tom Macmillan of the FEC on how cutting waste is good but stopping the drive for limitless growth is better. It goes on to talk about the lack of composting and anaerobic digestion facilities. Main picture: food mountain in Spain. Finishing remarks: how us at home can lower our food waste…” Keep your fridge at 1-5 degrees to make chilled food last for longer”.
Food Waste - householders to blame?
Methane from Brewing Waste (and possibly school dinners). Details on the latest in what will hopefully be a long line of anaerobic digesters, British Gas and the government want to generate 15% of the UK 's domestic gas this way by 2020.
Another push towards pay as you throw schemes. Due to the fines that the landfill directive will bring if we don’t lower our waste to landfill enough (we won’t), council tax will end up being higher anyway.
Food production waste was highlighted in the Beyond Carbon Report (here is the original report). It generates around 20 percent of green house gas emissions necessitating a cross-departmental strategy to reduce waste.
Hillary Benn urges the Scottish Parliament to do more to tackle waste and said that it was "not sensible" to put food waste into landfill, where it produces methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, when it could be put into special "anaerobic digester" waste disposal units and generate clean, renewable energy."
Tesco have proposed introducing “buy one, get one later” vouchers to cut down on food waste.
There are currently two programmes that will allocate budgets for anaerobic digestion (AD), these being the Waste Infrastructure Procurement Programme and the Materials Action Programme (see also here and here)
One Sainbury's employee admits to giving away food to a local homeless charity that is still “healthy, nutritious and within it use-by dates”
CO2Sense Yorkshire offers small businesses finding to reduce food waste
Korea want to charge people for the amount of food waste they throw away specifically to try and reduce it.
The Aldersdate Group think we should concentrate on food, waste, and water as well as carbon emissions as they are just as important. However food waste is very carbon intensive, this isn’t at the front of most people’s minds.
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